On Fri, 6 Nov 1998, Jack De Winter wrote:
1) According to Alexey's reading (and mine) of the rfc, you MUST read
the first item of a MX record, and MAY go to the other MX records, in
listed order of preference if a given MX record fails.
I think current SMTP implementation for most MTAs assume that the
recipient MUST be able to handle the SMTP connection requests from the
sender at any time. So for intermittently-connected sites, the first MX
*MUST* be set to a mail server which is also a continuously-connected
site anyway, for a reliable service.
I understand what Alexey writes, but I think this is rather an
operational issue than a standardization issue, since requiring all MTAs
to poll all MX sites sounds quite inpractical to me. Maybe the
"stronger wording to suggest" Jack mentioned is one of few things we can
do for revising the standard document.
// Kenji Rikitake